


Mr. & Mrs. Barton (Or: Why Natasha Sends Jennifer Aniston an Annual Apologetic Fruit Basket)

by shellybelle



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Headcanon, Mr. and Mrs. Smith AU, this is so predictable but whatever I do what I want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:42:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellybelle/pseuds/shellybelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years before they meet as Hawkeye and the Black Widow, they meet as Clint and Natasha. There is a romance, a marriage, and then, predictably, everything goes absolutely to hell, and Clint still thinks they should be getting royalty money from the DVD sales of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. (Or: boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl get married. Boy and girl neglect to do background checks.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which there is a courtship

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance for: Google Translate, picking and choosing bits and pieces of comic canon, Clint is a secret romantic.
> 
> No apologies for: self-indulgent prose, porn.
> 
> This fic was begging to be written as soon as the words, "You and I remember Budapest very differently" left Clint's mouth.

“Egy nagy tejeskávé, kérem.”

 

Something about the woman’s voice caught Clint’s attention, and he glanced up from his newspaper in time to see a slim, pretty redhead flash a dazzling smile at the barista as she handed over some cash in exchange for a large cup of foam. She turned away, tossing a few red curls out off her forehead, and Clint caught her eye.

 

She stopped for half an instant. Hesitated an instant more.

 

And then, slowly, cautiously, she smiled.

 

Clint tilted his head to the side, nudged the other chair away from the table, and raised an eyebrow in invitation.

 

The woman set her bag on the floor and sat down across from him, her latte in her hands. “So,” she said in American-accented English, and damn but that voice was like honey dripping off the comb. “You’re American.”

 

A lesser man might have been surprised. Clint Barton tended to pride himself on being a bigger man, and for keeping the smirk that thought threatened off his face. “I am,” he said. “What gave it away?”

 

Her smile quirked up at one corner. “I’m very observant,” she said. “Also, I can see your passport.”

 

Clint glanced down at the travel briefcase at his feet. Sure enough, the cover of his American passport was visible. “Ouch,” he said, tucking it down and zipping the pocket shut. “Guess I should pay more attention to those airport security briefings, huh?”

 

“The TSA does their best to protect and serve, but we need your help,” she said, her face entirely straight, and then laughed, brushing her hair back again, this time with her (well-manicured, and entirely ring-free) left hand. “I’m Natasha.”

 

“Clint.” The shook hands across the table, and Clint grinned at her. “So, Natasha,” he said, “what brings you to Budapest?”

 

***

 

This is true: When Natasha first meets Clint, she thinks he looks like the sort of rugged, coarse, snarky man who listens to country music and hangs out in seedy, smoky bars, waiting for a girl with the right breast-to-ass ratio to give him a second glance.

 

This is true: When Clint first meets Natasha, he is the sort of rugged, coarse, snarky man who listens to country music and hangs out in seedy, smoky bars, waiting for a girl with the right breast-to-ass ratio to give him a second glance.

 

This is true: Though Natasha’s sexual history might imply otherwise, this is exactly the sort of man she likes.

 

***

 

Clint had a wicked sense of humor and a smile that crinkled the corner of his eyes. He was not a pretty man, and he did not appear to be a gentle man, either. He laughed easily and spoke Hungarian like a native, and the timbre of his voice as he switched from one language to another sent a shiver up Natasha’s spine.

 

Natasha liked him immediately, and wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

 

“So,” he said as they left the café, somehow agreeing without words that they would walk in the same direction. Natasha had nowhere to be until midnight, and Clint seemed to be on no schedule but his own. “You’re not American, are you?”

 

She looked at him, a little surprised. Her English was flawless; the Red Room had made sure that any language she spoke, she spoke with no detectable accent, and the KGB had refined that training further. “What makes you say that?” she asked, careful. She had a Beretta Tomcat in her purse that she could get to in less than a second, and she liked Clint from what she’d seen so far, but she didn’t like him so much she couldn’t put a bullet in his head.

 

Clint shrugged, not breaking his stride. “You don’t meet a lot of nice American girls named Natasha Romanova,” he said, and he was smarter than she’d thought, used the proper  _Romanova_ instead of the Americanized  _Romanoff_ she’d given him. “You don’t have an accent, though, only when you say your name. What are you, Russian?”

 

“Yes,” she said, but she eased her fingers away from her purse and forced herself to relax. “I was born in Volgograd.”

 

“Any family?”

 

She tilted her head to the sky, looking up at the buildings around her. She had always loved Budapest; the architecture was beautiful, like something out of a history book or a memory. She watched the clouds for a moment, reminding herself that Clint was a nice man in a strange city, not an interrogator. “Not anymore,” she said.

 

A warm hand brushed hers and she looked at him, found him gazing at her with something like affection, and it had been so long since she’d seen it in its genuine form that it took her a moment to recognize the book. “Me, too,” he said, and before she could stop herself, she squeezed his hand.

 

***

 

This is true: Natasha does not remember her blood family. Sometimes there are snippets: a lullaby, a soft perfume, a piano just slightly out of tune.

 

This is true: Natasha thinks that once, maybe, she did remember her family—that she had real memories, solid memories, memories she could reach out and touch. But she has been made and unmade and reconstructed so many times that any memories she might have had are gone, far away, there only in the faintest flickers of scent and sound.

 

This is true: Clint remembers his family too well.

 

***

 

“You did  _not_ grow up in the circus,” Natasha said, laughing around the rim of her glass. She had a gorgeous laugh, and Clint had been thinking that all day. She laughed like someone who didn’t laugh very often, someone who needed to laugh more often, and it sent a warm feeling into the bottom of Clint’s gut.

 

Clint grinned. “I did."

 

“Prove it.”

 

He held up one finger and she laughed, settling back in her chair and arching one perfectly shaped eyebrow at him. Clint winked at her, climbing to his feet and plucking three dinner rolls from the basket in the center of the table. He tossed one up in the air, then another, and then the third, bringing them all into easy motion. Juggling was never his specialty, and he’d never found it particularly entertaining—not enough explosions, not enough action, not enough flips and spins and tumbles. But it was just about the only circus skill he had that was appropriate for the public sphere, and he managed to get five rolls spinning through the air before he caught them all and finished with a flourishing bow, earning a laugh from Natasha and scattered applause from the surrounding tables. Clint took his seat again. “Satisfied?”

 

Natasha shrugged, but there was a smile tugging at her lips. “It’s not that hard to learn to juggle.”

 

Clint spread his hands in defeat. “Well, find me an elephant and some tightropes and I’ll show you some real tricks.”

 

“I’ll get my elephant dealer on the phone.” Her eyes sparkled in the restaurant’s low, romantic lighting. She laced her fingers together, resting her chin on them. “So, Clint Barton of the circus. Do you often come to strange cities and spend an entire day sightseeing with a strangeer?”

 

“Only when an exceptional woman comes along.” Clint saluted her with his glass of wine.

 

“And what makes me exceptional?”

 

Clint paused, his lips to his glass, and looked at her. Natasha regarded him with sparkling green eyes, but there was something guarded behind them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something about you intrigues me.”

 

“Intrigues?” Natasha raised her eyebrows, curling one finger around the stem of her wine glass and leaning forward. The motion pressed her breasts forward, but Clint kept his eyes on hers. “I intrigue you, Mr. Barton?”

 

“Why the sudden formality, Miss Romanova?” Clint waggled his eyebrows and Natasha laughed, her posture relaxing, and Clint leaned back in his chair. “You’re very beautiful,” he said honestly.

 

“I am,” Natasha said.

 

“And you’re bold.”

 

Natasha smiled. “I’m that, too.”

 

Clint put his glass down and leaned forward. “In my line of work,” he said, “I don’t meet a lot of women like you.”

 

“In your line of work?” Natasha tilted her head to one side. A few curls slipped free from her ponytail and dangled over her shoulder, the restaurant’s lighting sending flickers of gold dancing across the red strands. “I might not know what you do, Clint, but I’m willing to bet that you have no shortage of bold, beautiful women.”

 

“I do.” Clint took Natasha’s wine glass and set it aside. “Scores of them,” he said, climbing to his feet and holding out a hand for hers. Natasha uncrossed her legs and took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “But very few who manage to be bold, beautiful, and absolutely unconcerned with both.”

 

“You think I’m unconcerned?” Natasha looked up at him through her lashes. It was almost laughably flirtatious, but it made Clint’s chest tingle. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, tossing the requisite bills for their wine onto the table.

 

“I think you’re concerned that I think you’re unconcerned,” Clint said.

 

She laughed, more quietly now. “That doesn’t make any sense.” 

 

“Sometimes I don’t make any sense,” Clint admitted, resting his hands on her waist. He stepped closer to her, just a fraction, and felt her tense, pupils darkening. He’d called her beautiful, but it was more than that. “Is that okay with you?”

 

“That’s okay with me,” she said, and Clint wasn’t entirely sure who kissed who first.

 

***

 

This is true: Clint is an artist in bed. He plays her body like a harp until it sings and Natasha, for the first time in her life, gives herself over to pure, mindless pleasure, lets him take control and coax orgasm after orgasm from her until she clings to him, gasping, his name tumbling from her lips.

 

This is true: When he slides into her, Natasha curses in his ear, filthy Russian that he pretends not to understand. Her fingernails leave red lines down his shoulders as he thrusts, and when he catches her ear between her teeth she cries out his name and it pushes him right over the edge.

 

This is true: Afterwards she turns her head into the crook of his neck and shakes. He thinks maybe she’s crying and he strokes her hair, and she gives a great shudder and says “ _thank you_ ,” but when he says “for what?” she only pulls him closer.

 

This is true: Natasha has never, ever chosen before.

 

***

 

“Stay,” Clint said.

 

Natasha pulled up the strap of her bra, twisting around to look at him. Clint lay on his side, still naked, the blankets pooled around his hips, his hair mussed and tousled, sweat still glistening on his skin. “I can’t,” she said, and the regret in her voice was genuine, but she had a man to kill at midnight and that was a date she had to keep. She turned more fully, reaching out to brush her fingertips over his cheek. “I wish I could.”

 

He turned his cheek against her hand. “Then why don’t you?”

 

“There’s something I have to do.” She found her skirt and wormed her way into it.

 

“I thought you were on vacation.”

 

“I am on vacation,” she said, and the lie felt heavy in her mouth as she pulled her shirt over her head. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “But I have an appointment.”

 

Clint gazed at her for a moment. “Okay,” he said, and he reached over to the bedside table, opening an envelope emblazoned with the hotel name,  _Gerlóczy_. It was a nice hotel—not fancy, but nice, authentic. He slipped his hand inside and pulled out a card key. “Here.”

 

Natasha looked at it. “What’s this?”

 

He raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s the spare key to my room.”

 

“I know it’s the spare key to your room, idiot,” she said, the words slipping out of her mouth before she could stop them, and he snorted as if to say  _you’re the one who just spent the last three hours in my bed, who’s the idiot here?_ “Why are you giving me your spare key?”

 

Clint sat up a little straighter, and Natasha watched him, appreciating the lines of his body, and took a moment to acknowledge the fact that he was clearly the most dignified naked man she’d ever seen. “You’ve got somewhere to be,” he said. “That’s cool. But if you want to come back, y’know.” He waved the card at her. “I’d like it.”

 

Natasha took the card, ran her fingers over the smooth plastic. “You do this a lot? Bring strange women back to your hotel rooms for hours of passionate sex?”

 

“You think I’m passionate?” Clint asked, waggling his eyebrows, and Natasha felt her lips twitch. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I bring strange women back to my hotel rooms for hours of sex.” She started to stand and he caught her wrist. “But,” he said, quieter now, “I’ve never given a woman a key before.”

 

Natasha curled her fingers around his, squeezed once, and got to her feet, stepping into her shoes and slipping the key into her purse. “Go to sleep, Clint.”

 

Clint leaned back against the pillows. “Are you going to come back?”

 

She leaned over and brushed her lips over his. “Go to sleep,” she breathed into his mouth, and felt his smile.

 

When the door clicked shut behind her, she stepped down into the stairwell and leaned against the wall. She closed her eyes and took in a gasp of air, then another, and then she squared her shoulders and headed down the stairs to kill a KGB defector.

 

***

 

This is true: When Clint wakes in the middle of the night, Natasha is curled naked against his back. He realizes that she somehow made it into his room, into his bed, and against his body without waking him and is briefly alarmed. But she is warm and soft and her hair, slightly damp, smells like hotel shampoo and fresh perfume, so he credits his concerns to too much sex and not enough sleep, and he closes his eyes again.

 

This is true: In the morning, Clint wakes Natasha with a tray of fruit and pastries and coffee, and she thinks  _he got up without waking me_ and then  _he remembered my coffee order_ and then  _God, that smells incredible_ , and then Clint is putting the tray down on the table and she is rolling into his arms.

 

This is true: By the time they get around to breakfast, Natasha’s coffee is cold, but she drinks it anyway, pastry crumbs in her hair and Clint’s chest warm against her back.

 

***

 

“I met a girl,” Clint told Coulson at the end of his debrief.

 

He wasn’t entirely sure why he said it. Natasha wasn’t the first woman he’d met in a foreign city. But there was something different about her, something special, and Coulson must have heard that in his voice because he raised his eyebrows. “Did you, now?”

 

Clint leaned back in his chair. “She was smart,” he said honestly. “She was funny and beautiful and we slept together—like,  _slept_ together, and it’s very possible that I gave her a key to my hotel room and we spent a week mostly not leaving the room.”

 

Coulson stared at him for a moment. Very carefully, he put down the pen he’d been using to write the debrief notes and folded his hands into a steeple. “And what was this mystery woman’s name?”

 

“Oh, no,” Clint said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Coulson, you’re not doing a background check on this girl.”

 

“It’s standard protocol, Agent Barton,” Coulson said, and it was his  _you know how this works, Barton, why are you arguing with me_  voice, but Clint frowned stonily at him until Coulson sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I will not do a background check on her. Yet.”

 

Clint allowed himself a moment of victory and then sighed. “Honestly, it probably doesn’t matter. I gave her my number, but she doesn’t seem—I don’t know if I’ll ever even see her again.”

 

***

 

This is true: They see each other again. Natasha calls him in Paris; he calls her in London. There are other cities: Sydney, Tokyo, Chicago, Tel Aviv, Beijing. They fuck in beds and in Jacuzzis, on soft carpet and hardwood floors, against dressers and under waterfalls. It is indulgent and luxurious and amazing, and Clint has never been happier.

 

This is true: Natasha doesn’t know how to handle this, how to handle making her own choices. The Red Room had rules and the KGB has even more and she breaks them: she sleeps with a man who is not a mark; she indulges in pleasure for pleasure’s sake. She gets her marks, but when they’re down, she goes back to Clint’s bed.

 

This is true: Love is for children, but when Clint pulls her into his arms, when she falls asleep to the scent of his skin and his breath soft against her neck, she feels her heart pound. She does not feel like a child, but she feels something.

 

***

 

They were in the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, surrounded by art, so close to the paintings that Natasha wanted to reach out and touch them, brush her fingers over the oil paint. She knew she could do it without setting off a single alarm.

 

Clint had connections in Rio, someone at the museum, and he’d gotten them into the museum after hours. The lighting in the gallery was dim and soft and Clint called it  _mood lighting_ with a laugh. His fingers had brushed over the small of her back, the skin left bare by a cutout in her dress, and it had taken more of her training to suppress a pleasant shudder than she cared to admit.

 

“You listened,” Natasha murmured, stopping in front of one painting, an Edgar Devas,  _Two Dancers in Yellow and Pink_.

 

Beside her, looking more interested in the frame than the painting, Clint said, “To what?”

 

“When I said I liked art.” It had been her escape, in the Red Room. Ivan would not permit her movies or magazines, but books, oh, books he gave her; literature in all the languages they taught her, Russian and English and French and Italian, all of the classics; books of art prints in fine, glossy paper. She’d run her fingers over the pictures and thought,  _someday I’ll see you in person, someday I’ll touch you for real_ , and when she slept, on the good nights, she’d dreamed of oil and pigment, spread on canvas in delicate swirls and heavy strokes. “You listened to me.”

 

“I always listen to you, Tash,” he said, and his voice made her shiver, just a bit, because no one had ever given her a nickname before. There was something in his tone, though, something hesitant, and as she turned he took her hand. “If you’ll let me,” he said, slowly, “I’ll always listen to you.”

 

“Clint,” she said, and her voice sounded very far away to her ears, and she could hear her pulse pounding. He held onto her hand and her gaze and sank, very slowly, to one knee. “Clint,” she said again, because men had proposed to her and it had always, always ended in blood, and they called her  _the Black Widow_ , and she knew her sting was deadly and she did not want this man to die.

 

But he did not let go of her hand, and he kept his eyes on hers, and his face was earnest and beautiful in its imperfections and he said, “Natasha,” and then, “ _Natalia_ , Natalia Alianova Romanova, will you—”

 

And before he could even pull out the ring, Natasha knelt in front of him, cupped his face in her hands, and whispered, “yes.”

 

***

 

This is true: They get married on a beach in Tobago, just the two of them and an officiate who speaks English with a heavy French-Creole accent. They sign no papers and there are no witnesses, just Natasha’s hands in Clint’s, soft and smooth as he slides the slim platinum band onto her finger.

 

This is true: They write their own vows. Clint tells her she has put the light back in his life; he does not tell her that because of her, he no longer finds reasons to get himself into the line of fire. Natasha tells him that he has taught her how to feel again; she does not tell him that before him, there was nothing but cold winter and colder hands and that he put warmth into her body and reminded her how to breathe. They do not say,  _until death do us part_. They do say,  _I do_.

 

This is true: The roads behind them are long and winding; they weave across the world; sometimes, they overlap; both roads are paved and cobbled with blood, deep and dripping.

 

This is true: On their wedding day, they both wear white.


	2. in which there is a marriage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left comments and kudos on the first chapter--I had so much fun writing and it was so great to get feedback! :) 
> 
> Also: A decent 40% of this chapter is porn. 
> 
> I feel like I should apologize, but I also feel like you all won't mind too much. If there's anything the Avengers love, it's smut.

“Jesus, Tasha,” Clint said, raising his eyebrows at her as she trooped through the front door. “Is there anything left at the stores?”

Natasha rolled her eyes, thrusting the bags from Crate and Barrel and Williams-Sonoma at him so that she could worm her feet out of her high heels. “Every kitchen utensil you own is at least four years old,” she informed him, taking the bags back and making her way into the kitchen—their kitchen, she thought, and the idea of it still made her tingle a bit. “I am a newlywed, and I want some shiny new toys.” She put the bags down on the counter. “You’re such a good cook, too—how have you been using such old stuff?”

“Hey,” he protested. “My stuff is well-loved, not old. You’re going to give it a complex.”

“I married a madman,” Natasha said, a little fondly.

Clint chuckled, dropped a kiss to her cheek. “Okay, Mrs. Barton,” he said. “What did you bring me?”

Mrs. Barton, Natasha thought, and smiled, opening the first bag.

***

This is true: They have both been newlyweds before. 

This is true: It was never like this.

***

The first thing Clint noticed, as they slowly settled into a routine, was how much better he slept.

Natasha’s body fit against his like a glove, and for the first time in years he slept without nightmares. There were no flashbacks, no terrors, no shaking or fits of confusion—just the gentle rise and fall of Natasha’s breast under his arm, or the warm weight of her back against his chest. 

Sometimes, he still woke in the middle of the night, but even then it was a slow waking, a soft shift from dreaming to dozing to consciousness, and he would breathe in the clean scent of Natasha’s hair and tighten his arms around her and drift back to sleep.

Tonight, though, sleep eluded him, and he nuzzled her neck and pressed a kiss to the spot where her neck met her ear, and she stirred and smiled and rolled over in his arms, a sleepy smile on her face. “Hi,” she mumbled. “Can’t sleep?”

“No,” he said, voice low, because he had always associated dark rooms with quiet voices, even though it was just the two of them and there was no one else there, no one else in the world but them. “Didn’t mean to wake you, though.”

Natasha laughed, softly. “Liar,” she said, sliding her arms around him and pulling him and over her, shifting until he settled between her legs, his cock stirring between her thighs. She crooked her hips against him and he exhaled a laugh into her neck. “Come here,” she murmured, and he slid home with a sigh, feeling her shudder against him, her fingers tightening in his hair. “Clint,” she breathed, and he stilled against her for a moment, waiting. Natasha draped her legs around his hips; her thighs tightened around him, and God but that woman had the most amazing legs he’d ever had the privilege to get between. “Yes.”

Clint moved slowly, gently; it wasn’t the right time for hard and fast. Natasha’s hands grazed his shoulders, his back; he ran his lips over her neck and jaw and collarbone until she arched against him, her pelvis rolling toward his as he coaxed an orgasm from her, waiting until she’d gone pliant against him to move again. Her second orgasm was harder, she whimpered, burying her face into the crook of his neck as she shuddered and shook, and this time he drew her lips to his, kissing her long and deep as he came, spilling inside her, his groan lost between their lips.

They kissed for a few more minutes, Natasha stroking his cheeks gently, and then she patted his cheek. “Up,” she said, and he pulled out of her, relishing her shiver just a little more than was maybe necessary, rolling to the side and watching the satisfied sway of her hips as she made her way into the en suite bathroom.

He was melting back into the pillows when she came back, curling close against him to avoid the damp spot on the sheets. “Think you can sleep now?”

Clint nuzzled her cheek and Natasha laughed, shifting so that he lay with his head on her breast, her arm tucked under his neck, one of his arms thrown over her stomach. “I think so,” he said, and felt a slight pressure as she kissed the top of his head, and then the soft touch of her fingers as she ran them through his hair. “Love you, Tash,” he said, leaning into her touch.

“I know,” she said. “I love you too.”

He slept through the night, and when the sunlight shining through the curtains woke him in the morning, Natasha was still asleep in his arms, a soft smile curving her lips.

 

***

This is true: They learn each other. Natasha learns that Clint always makes brunch on Sunday mornings and but has to be dragged out of bed on Saturdays, that he hates doing laundry and that his hands are so amazing because he took a massage therapy course at a community college in high school. Clint learns that Natasha will be antsy all day if she doesn’t shower in the morning, that she loves to sit on the front porch and watch thunderstorms, that she owns over a thousand books and has read every single one at least twice.

This is true: They don’t have many friends. Natasha has a few girls from the Red Room who followed her to the KGB, but they are not friends so much as they are survivors, and in place of cosmopolitans and manicures, they drink vodka from the bottle and stitch each other back together and play real or not real with their memories. Clint has Coulson, and sometimes they drink together after missions, a few beers or maybe a game of darts, but in the end Coulson is a handler, not a friend. They are polite to the neighbors, dutifully attend the barbeques and the housewarming parties, but at the end of the day they go home to each other, and it’s enough.

This is true: It’s more than enough.

***

On a rainy night in January, two years, seven months, and fifteen days after their wedding, Clint came home late from a business trip.

Natasha was waiting for him on the couch, her worn, battered copy of The Brothers Karamazov in her hands. She’d shoved a Ruger 9 millimeter between the couch cushions out of habit, because Clint was never late, and she read the same sentence twenty times over, her mind racing, they found me, they found me, they know, they know.

She heard a key scrape in the lock and forced herself to breathe evenly. Lots of husbands come home late, she reminded herself. And this is the first time in two years. It’s okay. Even so, she held her breath.

“Natasha?” Clint’s voice, a little ragged, but his, and then he was poking his head into the living room. There were circles under his eyes and a faint bruise along his hairline, crusted with blood, and Natasha sucked in a quick breath, rolling to her feet and letting her book fall abandoned to the couch cushions.

“What happened?” she breathed, cupping his face in his hands and turning it this way and that, checking him for more blood. There were deep bruises along his throat and she recognized the marks of an attempted choking when she saw one. “Clint, what—”

“Security detail got a little out of hand,” he said, and she bit the inside of her cheek. Who was she to chastise him for having a dangerous job, when she slipped out of the country every other week to kill or maim or seduce or torture?

He still wore his coat, mostly soaked despite the umbrella leaning against the wall of the entryway, and she ran her hands over his shoulders and chest, heedless of the water dripping off him. Clint hissed through his teeth when she pressed down too hard, and Natasha took a step back. “Show me,” she ordered, and Clint shrugged off his coat, letting it drop into a wet pile on the floor, and for once Natasha ignored it. She unbuttoned his jacket and shirt herself, easing it over his shoulders, and then slipped her fingers under the hem of his undershirt, feeling his muscles tense under her touch and then tugging upwards, pulling it over his head.

His torso was a mess of bruises but the skin was intact, save for a few messy scrapes over his ribs. She dipped her head to kiss them, running her fingertips over his skin to check for blood, and Clint caught her fingers. “Natasha,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“You’re not,” she said, before she could stop herself, and it was ridiculous, because he was okay; she knew what not okay looked like and this wasn’t it. But this was Clint, her Clint, and he was battered and bruised and bloody, and he might be okay but it was not okay to her.

“Tash,” Clint said, his voice soothing, and she realized with a jolt that she’d been rambling out loud. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, then trailed his hands down to curve over her backside, lifting her up in one smooth motion with the same easy, effortless strength she was used to and pressing her back against the wall of the entryway. Natasha twined her legs around his waist, shuddering into his touch. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m here.”

Natasha curled one hand around the back of his head and pulled him in for a hard kiss, pushing her lips against his hard enough to bruise. He groaned into her mouth and held her against the wall with one arm, strong and steady, his other hand reaching between their bodies to unfasten his belt one-handed, shoving down his zipper and pulling his cock free. Natasha whimpered against his mouth as he pushed her skirt over her hips and her underwear to the side and sank into her in one swift thrust. She wasn’t quite wet enough and it hurt, the stretching, but it was a good hurt and she sank her fingernails into his shoulders, knowing there would be even more bruises on Clint’s already-scarred skin in the morning; she dragged her teeth against his neck and groaned at the way he arched into her. “You’ll never leave me,” she bit out against him. “Clint, say it.”

Clint groaned, one hand clenched into her hair, his hips moving in a harsh rhythm and sweat glistening on his forehead. “I will never leave you,” he growled, leaning down to catch her bottom lip between his teeth; he rocked into her, hard, and she cried out. “Natasha Romanova Barton, I swear, I will never,” he kissed her, thrust his hips hard, “ever,” another thrust, “leave you.”

His last thrust brought his pelvis into sharp contact with her clit and Natasha came with a strangled cry, clenching her legs around him, and felt him tense against her before coming with a jerk of his hips, heat rushing between her thighs. She clung to him, breathing hard, pressing her forehead against his, and after a moment Clint leaned back, looking at her through blue-green eyes gone dark with pleasure. “Nat,” he said. “Are you okay?”

Natasha pulled in a shuddering breath and looked him in the eye. “I knew someone once,” she said. “He left, and he didn’t come back.” 

Clint braced her against the wall with one arm and used the other to smooth her hair back from where it stuck, sweaty and slick, against her cheek. “He died,” he murmured, not a question.

“Yes.”

He kissed her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered. “I promise you.”

Natasha closed her eyes. It wasn’t the first time someone had made her that promise, but it was the first time she believed it.

***

This is true: Natasha knows that Clint is former military. He is too disciplined with his body, too fluid and measured in his movements, to be anything else. She knows that he works for a security firm now, designs systems for corporations and billionaires, and that sometimes he tests it himself and comes home a little bloody, a little battered, a little bruised. After the first time, the time against the wall, she understands, and she no longer reacts with terror. She has always been with dangerous men, and it seems her husband is no different.

This is true: She finds it almost comforting.

This is true: Clint knows that Natasha works in international relations, that she travels from country to country to translate and negotiate. He knows she takes to language like a fish to water, that words fall from her lips like honey, smooth and easy and effortless. He knows that sometimes she is gone a week, sometimes two or three, but she always comes home whole.

This is true: It has three years, eight months, and nine days since their wedding before Clint begins to wonder why she never comes home smiling.

***

There were circles under Natasha’s eyes.

She knew how to hide them, leaning over the bathroom counter and brushing a flawless layer of concealer over her skin, but Clint knew the signs, knew what to look for. “I know you’re tired,” he said, lounging against the door. “We don’t have to go.”

“No, we promised Sharon, and I’ll get dirty looks from Kate every time I go running if we don’t.” Natasha smoothed her concealer, blending it into her skin, and then uncapped her mascara. Clint loved the way she did her makeup, not too heavy, but dark enough to be suggestive, just slightly provocative. She put the mascara down and turned to face him. “How do I look?”

“Beautiful,” Clint told her, meaning it. “You always look beautiful to me.”

Natasha laughed softly, running her fingertips through her hair a few times, fluffing out the red curls and slipping past him to the walk-in closet. “You’re such a flatterer,” she called over her shoulder, and Clint grinned, stepping up behind her and placing a quick kiss to her shoulder blade.

“These ones,” he murmured over her skin.

She tilted her head slightly to give him more access to her neck. “Which ones, what?”

Clint reached over her and picked up a pair of shoes, a simple pair of wedge sandals with pink straps. “These.”

Natasha leaned her head back against his shoulder. “I was going to wear the black ones.”

He chuckled, kissing the spot where her shoulder met her neck. “The black ones, my darling,” he said, “are for making men look at your gorgeous ass—” he dropped one hand to her backside and squeezed for emphasis; she squealed a bit in response “—and since you spend most of your time appealing to foreign diplomats in what I can only imagine is a slow, steady race to world peace, I can’t really object to you wearing them to work. But I can sure as hell object to you wearing them to neighborhood dinner parties, because Dave and Chris are just going to stare at you and then make jokes to me and then I’ll have to kill them all with my bare hands and bury them in their perfectly-landscaped yards.”

“I love when you talk dirty,” Natasha said, laughing. The sound vibrated up his chest and Clint inhaled the smell of her perfume, spicy and sweet. She moved away from him to pick up the shoes and he frowned at the loss of contact, scooping her up shoes and all to carry her back into the bedroom, settling down on the bed with her on his lap. “What’s this for?”

“I can be a chair,” Clint explained, wrapping one arm around her. “You just get yourself ready.”

He flexed his hips unconsciously and Natasha laughed. “I don’t think so. This is a dangerous place for me to sit.” She pulled away to sit beside him, slipping her feet into the wedges and fastening the straps. “There. Presentable?”

She spun in a slow circle for him, the pale pink sundress and yellow cardigan moving effortlessly with her, her hair lagging a bit behind as it settled around her face in waves of red. She wore no jewelry except for the platinum wedding band on her finger, and Clint liked it that way. “Perfect,” Clint said. “Let’s go.”

The party was an outdoor affair, a celebration for Sharon and Brad on the birth of their daughter Emily. The baby, seemingly unconcerned with her status as guest of honor, was passed from partygoer to partygoer, and Clint didn’t fail to notice that, of all of them, Natasha was the only one who smiled, shook her head, and let the baby pass without holding her.

In bed that night, Clint propped himself up on his elbow and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“The baby thing?” Natasha gazed up at him, features clear and visible in the moonlight shining through the blinds.

“Baby things in general.” He settled one hand on her ribcage and moved it down, slowly, over the flat planes of her belly. Her skin was warm and soft and smooth, still slightly damp from her shower. “We’ve never talked about kids.”

Natasha’s muscles tensed under his fingertips, the motion visible. “Do you want to talk about kids?”

Clint held her gaze and didn’t let her look away. “Do you?”

She reached up to him, twining her arms around his neck and drawing him down to her. “Yes,” she whispered, her breath a ghost against his lips and something like sadness coloring her voice, “but not tonight.”

***

This is true: Clint has always wanted children. He loves kids and they love him. He can be silly and funny and he’s not afraid to get down on the floor and get his hands dirty; he will let kids crawl all over him and cover his face with finger paint and once he compromised an entire mission to save a five-year-old girl from a collapsing building. But he remembers his parents, and he remembers Barney, and he wonders how much of what they did to him will have lingering effects, how much of the cruelty, the harshness, the anger is in his blood, in his DNA.

This is true: Natasha isn’t sure she can have children. She knows she bleeds every lunar cycle like clockwork, three days in a row and then nothing. She has never missed a period, never been even a day late. She has an IUD because it seemed like a prudent thing to do, but she knows that they did things to her, in the Red Room, that they sped up her healing and her reflexes and her mind, and she doesn’t know what else they might have done while they were turning her inside out.

This is true: Natasha has never wanted children before, but she thinks—in another life, in a life where there are no guns, no missions, no knives taped to the inside of her bedside table drawer—that she might be willing to want them with Clint.

This is true: For the Black Widow, the woman who has only ever given birth to death and destruction, it is a terrifying want.

 

***

“Beautifully done, Natalichka,” Sergei said, spreading out the pictures of her latest massacre across the table. 

Natasha gazed steadily back at him. The mission had been a simple one: infiltrate, interrogate, eliminate. She had not spilled a single drop of blood in her interrogation, she was too good for that, and she had shot each of the six men at point-blank range and cleaned the blood from under her fingernails in the en suite bathroom while she waited for the cleanup crew. “Thank you, sir.”

Sergei didn’t acknowledge her words, just opened a new file and began to flip through it. He drummed his fingers on the folder and Natasha counted the ways she could break those fingers into tiny pieces, flexing her own. The skin of her left hand was smooth and of a uniform color, she took pains to make sure that the faint tan line left by her wedding band was completely erased. 

“I worry,” Sergei said after a few moments, “that you will not like what I am about to tell you.”

Very carefully, Natasha tilted her head to one side, just far enough so that a few red curls slipped over her shoulder. “I’m sure I won’t have a problem, sir.”

Sergei pulled a snapshot from the folder and handed it to her, face down. “No, Nataschenka,” he said. “I think that you will.”

Natasha turned the picture over, and stared down at her husband’s face. 

This was not Clint as she had ever seen him. This was Clint in head-to-toe black, the unmistakable bulk of Kevlar over his chest. This was Clint with blood smeared across his forehead and coating his wrists; this was Clint crouched on a rooftop with a compact bow drawn back to his ear, his eyes fixed on a point long past the camera frame. 

This was Clint, and Clint was a killer. There was blood on his hands, just like there was blood on hers.

With her hands steady and her eyes dry, Natasha placed the photo back on the table. “Who is he?”

Sergei put the file down. “He is Clinton Barton. He is a covert operative with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. He has single-handedly taken out fourteen of our agents.” He opened the folder and withdrew a stack of photographs, handing it to her. “And you will not tell me that you do not know who he is.”

This time, Natasha couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. These were not photos; they were memories: the café in Budapest, their fingertips brushing over scones; the promenade in Santa Monica, Natasha’s high heels dangling from her fingers, her head on Clint’s shoulder; the restaurant in Jerusalem, Clint laughing, Natasha’s hair shimmering in the candlelight. The two of them, kissing: in Sydney, in New York, in Tokyo.

“We have known since the beginning,” Sergei said. “We hoped he would be more forthcoming, that he would tell you more. He did not, and he has lived out his usefulness to us.”

They knew.

“You didn’t tell me,” Natasha said.

“We did not wish for you to compromise the objective. And Mr. Petrovitch believed that it might be beneficial for you to…” Sergei’s lip curled. “Explore yourself.”

They knew.

“Does he know,” Natasha said, and her voice sounds distant, far away. “Does he know who I am?”

They KNEW.

“I can only imagine so,” Sergei said. “But that is not relevant.”

Natasha stared down at the pictures, at Clint’s eyes—narrowed and cool in concentration; crinkled around the corners with the smile she loved. She thought of his hands, so gentle over hers, bloody under the nails as they curved around the bow.

They knew they knew they knew they knew they knew—

“You will eliminate him, Natalia,” Sergei said. “Or we will.”

***

This is true: Sergei leaves the room, and when the door has closed behind him, Natalia Alianovna Romanova Barton lifts her head to the ceiling and screams.

***

“You shouldn’t have shot Roberts,” Coulson told him.

Clint shrugged. “He wouldn’t shut up,” he said. “It was a taser arrow, didn’t even really break the skin.”

Coulson sighed. “Do I want to know how he managed to provoke you?”

“Probably not,” Clint said, leaning comfortably back in his chair. His fingers ached with the familiar throb of too many hours on the firing range, but he’d awed a group of junior agents by splitting six arrows in half and then hitting three bullseyes with a blindfold over his eyes. “So. What’s next?”

“Mission brief.” Coulson pushed a thick file across the desk and Clint cocked one eyebrow. Usually, Coulson’s mission briefs were just that, a paragraph or two before he sent Clint in to meet with Fury. “I know,” Coulson said, as if sensing the confusion. “Trust me. I couldn’t narrow it down any further.”

“Jesus.” Clint picked up the file. “Codename: Black Widow, huh? I’ve heard of her. KGB operative, right?”

“The best of their best,” Coulson said. “And that’s saying something. We’ve compiled as much of her history as we can but it’s shaky at best. There are too many aliases, too many false trails. They’ve done a good job of making sure she exists everywhere and nowhere.”

Clint opened his mouth to reply, flipping open the file. His eyes landed on the snapshot, a black-and-white of a woman exiting a sleek car, and the words died on his lips.

The grayscale photo hid her coloring, but he didn’t need to see the picture in color to recognize the smooth line of her jaw, the way a few wisps of curly hair slipped into her face, the arch of her cheekbone against the dark sunglasses. A soft smile curved at her lips, a smile of satisfaction, contentment, the same smile that Clint woke up to every morning.

“Barton,” Coulson said.

Clint looked up at him. “This is her,” he said, barely daring to make it a question. “This is the Black Widow?”

Coulson regarded him with something like confusion. “Yes,” he said. “One of our undercover operatives caught this picture of her three weeks ago.”

“Where?” Natasha had been in Bangladesh three weeks ago, negotiating a dispute between representatives from Bengal and Burma. She’d come home with a soft tan to her skin and a box of new spices for them to try in the kitchen, and when he’d wrinkled his nose at the unfamiliar smell, she’d laughed at him. They’d made love on the kitchen counter, their homemade curry had burned, and they’d spent the night eating take-out sushi on the living room floor.

“Dhaka,” Coulson said, and Clint felt his stomach flip. “Clint,” he said. “Have you seen this woman before?”

Clint laughed, light-headed and a little too wild. “Yes,” he said. “Yeah, Phil, I have.”

***

This is true: Clint leaves with Natasha’s file in his hands. He goes to the nearest bar and orders a whiskey, tells the bartender to leave the bottle. He reads through the entire folder, every piece of information SHIELD has found on the Black Widow. He thinks how did I miss this and did she know who I was and how can I do this.

This is true: He climbs the drainpipe and sits on the roof of the bar for an hour, letting the chilled air cool the sweat on his skin and the buzz of the alcohol in his blood. He looks up at the stars and does not think about Natasha’s smile or her laugh or the way her fingertips feel on his skin; he thinks about the Black Widow and the pictures of the bodies, of men strangled in their beds and children slain in the snow.

This is true: He drives home and rehearses a thousand scenarios in his head. He goes through his mental arsenal of weapons, memorizes every hidden blade, gun, and heavy object in their house. He wonders whether their homeowners’ insurance covers spy-on-spy destruction. He suspects it does not.

This is true: When he walks through the door, Natasha is waiting for him with a gun in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE IS ANGST EVERYWHERE I'M SORRY. This chapter got away from me, and the notes at the end of the previous chapter ended up being entirely inaccurate, which I actually do apologize for. 
> 
> Stay tuned for the finale!


	3. in which everything goes, predictably, to hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY HERE IS THE LAST CHAPTER. It took forever and turned into a total beast, but oh goodness I love it, and I hope you will too! Thank you so much to everyone who read the first bits—this is my first multi-part Avengers fic (and my first multi-part fic _period_ in about four years!) and your feedback has been so wonderful!

For a long, agonizing moment, they just stared at each other.

 

Clint had walked through the door empty handed, and Natasha wasn’t sure whether to be glad or not—she had always hated to kill an unarmed man. The weight of the Ruger in her hands was a comfort, and she trained it on him, lining her shot up. She could kill him with a twitch of a finger, and she wanted to.

 

But she didn’t.

 

“Natasha,” he said, and his voice was rough and hoarse, the way it sounded when he’d been drinking whisky. Jameson, she thought, always his favorite, neat and clean, no ice. _I like the way it burns_ , he’d told her once, and she’d kissed the taste from his lips. He smiled at her, humorless, it didn’t reach her eyes. “Is this the part where I say ‘honey, I’m home?’”

 

Natasha held her gun arm steady. “You can say it,” she said, “but I never liked it when you called me honey.”

 

“I know.” Clint eyed her gun and suddenly he looked like the man in Sergei’s photo, the man who was cold and calculating and could probably kill her in as many ways as she could kill him. “So. KGB, huh?”

 

“So, SHIELD, huh?” she shot back, and Clint’s mouth tightened around the edges. “How long have you known?” she asked, and hated that the words came out in a whisper, breathless and broken. She was the Black Widow; she was better than this.

 

Clint held her gaze. “Would you believe me,” he said slowly, “if I said that I didn’t?”

 

“No,” Natasha said.

 

 _Liar_ , her mind whispered.

 

“ _No_ ,” she said again, and this time, she pulled the trigger.

 

***

 

This is true: When the gun goes off, everything shifts to slow motion. Clint looks at her and Natasha sees not fear but pain, and in the instant before he moves, she sees his heart break.

 

This is true: Clint does not think she’ll pull the trigger.

 

This is true: When the gun goes off, Clint looks Natasha in the eye, and she is looking at him with the Tasha’s eyes in the Black Widow’s face, and he thinks, _no, this is not the way it ends_.

 

This is true: He thinks, _this is not the way it ends_ , and he drops to the ground.

 

***

 

Clint read Natasha’s—the Black Widow’s—file from cover to cover. _Increased physical capacity_ , it read, _stamina, strength, speed_. _Increased mental competency and response time. Psychological conditioning._

Natasha was fast.

 

Impossibly, in that first moment, Clint was faster.

 

He hit the ground on all fours and kicked out with one leg, swiping her feet out from under her. The Ruger clattered to the ground but Natasha was already moving, spinning around and whipping a knife from under her shirt, lashing out. Clint caught her wrist, squeezed the pressure point, and she dropped the knife but punched him in the stomach with her free hand in the same moment. He doubled over, but not before he threw a punch of his own, catching her in the jaw. Natasha turned her head, spat out blood, and kneed him in the groin.

 

Clint dropped to his knees, allowed himself less than an instant of pain, and then rolled out of the way of her next kick. “Low blow, kicking a man while he’s down,” he grunted.

 

Natasha laughed harshly, blood trickling from her split lip. “I can aim lower,” she said, and reached under the couch, coming up with another gun. _.22 Caliber, ten round capacity_ , Clint thought. Natasha cocked, aimed, fired, and Clint dove behind the other couch. _One_. He pulled the knife from his boot and sliced the back of the couch open, tore the fabric and pulled out the pair of GLOCK .45 pistols. Two more shots blasted through the couch cushions and Clint went flat to the floor. _Three_ , he thought, and then rolled out from behind the couch, pulled the guns up, and fired a round from each gun.

 

There was a shower of red and for one terrifying moment Clint thought, _no, God, I didn’t want to_.

 

But Natasha was still moving and Clint realized with a jolt that the bullet had gone through her hair, sent a spray of red strands through the air. He let out a bark of laughter and tumbled back behind the couch, jerking the guns to cock the next round. “Still alive, baby?”

 

“Seem to be,” she said, and shot another two rounds through the couch. This time one of them scored a line across Clint’s back and he gritted his teeth, refusing to let out a sound. _Five_.

 

“Good,” Clint said, rolling into a crouch. “Be a shame, taking out the famous Black Widow so easily.” He tore the rest of the back off the couch and pulled the concealed crossbow free, nocking a bolt.

 

Natasha let out a peal of laughter, brief and high, not her usual laugh at all. “Can’t believe you missed,” she said. “All those stories about _Hawkeye_ , the man with the perfect aim—”

 

“Never heard you complaining before, darlin’,” Clint drawled. “You always tell me I hit _just_ the right spots.”

 

“Seems wrong to insult the sexual prowess of a dead man,” Natasha shot back.

 

That one stung and Clint somersaulted out from behind the couch, firing the crossbow. This time he aimed true and Natasha let out a hiss of pain as it embedded itself in the flesh of her shin. It was a wound designed to hurt, not to maim or kill, and Clint knew it, even as he loaded another bolt. _This is what it means to be compromised_ , he realized, and for the first time in years, his hand trembled on the trigger.

 

Natasha looked up at him, fire blazing in her green eyes. “Americans,” she whispered. “They breed you so soft. Even your killers are cowards.” She wrenched the bolt out of her leg and threw it at him and Clint brought the crossbow up, angling it in front of him to deflect the blow. The bolt glanced off him but Natasha was already moving, tackling him to the ground and pinning him beneath her thighs, restraining his wrists above his head with her hands and bringing her forehead down hard against his. Clint grunted in pain and wrenched them to the side, rolling her under him and jamming his elbow into her solar plexus; she responded by digging her nails into his neck and scraping bloody lines down his skin. “Synshlyukha,” she spat up at him, and Clint gave her a grin he knew was red; he could taste the copper tang of blood in his mouth.

 

“Not my fault you’ve got shit taste in men, Tasha,” he said. “Or maybe I was never your taste. Are you this enthusiastic on all your jobs?”

 

She let out a fierce cry and slammed her shoulder into the side of his head. Clint managed to punch her hard in the ribs before he crashed to the floor, rolling away from her to snatch up his crossbow and flipping up onto his feet, whirling around to face her—

 

Only to find her waiting, the .22 back in her hand, aimed steadily at his head. She was gasping, blood rolling from her lip and nose, the skin of her jaw and temple already darkening to bruises, her hair a tangled mess.

 

 _God_ , Clint thought, _she is beautiful_.

 

He dropped the crossbow.

 

“Pick it up,” Natasha said, and Clint shook his head, his voice failing. Natasha made a strangled sound in the back of her throat, like a stifled sob. “ _Pick it up_.”

 

“No,” Clint said. He took a step forward, then another, until the barrel of her gun rested gently against his forehead. This close he could see the faint tremor in her hand, the wild, terrified look in her eyes. “Natasha, I swear to you, I didn’t know who you were.”

 

“On what?” She steadied her hand for an instant, and then it wavered again. The barrel of the gun was warm against his forehead; he could smell the cordite in the air.

 

“Breakfast pastries and cold coffee,” he said, thinking of Budapest, of that first morning when he’d brought her breakfast bed and they’d fucked slow and tender, the early morning sunlight sending shimmers of golden light dancing in Natasha’s hair. He met her eyes, and saw they were shining, wet at the corners.

 

“On Budapest,” Natasha breathed.

 

She reached for him, and the gun fell to the floor.

 

***

 

This is true: It is the gentlest sex they’ve ever had.

 

This is true: It’s bloody, too, and messy. The living room is a mess of plaster and glass and couch stuffing and crystal, and Clint doesn’t bother to clear a space for them, just wraps Natasha in his arms and draws her down to the floor. He kisses the bruises on her skin and she runs her fingertips over the scrapes she’d drawn down his neck. She peels off his clothes, the fabric clinging in the blood over the gash in his back, and she lets him strip her slowly, following every inch of bared skin with his lips. He kisses her neck, her shoulders, the tops of her breasts, her nipples and navel, he maps her body with his lips and teeth and tongue until she surrenders under him, drawing him against her, whispers _please_ and pulls him close.

 

This is true: He sinks into her and it is like a blessing. _We fit_ , Natasha thinks, _we have always fit together like this._ He puts his forehead against hers and looks into her eyes; it’s too close for eye contact but he holds her gaze anyway, and moisture drips down from his face to hers, sweat and tears mixed together, salty-sweet. She thinks maybe she’s crying, too, and lets herself feel every prickle behind her eyes, every tug at her throat.

 

This is true: At the end, she cries out his name, and he whispers _I love you, I love you, I love you_ , a benediction against her lips, and she kisses him until it hurts, and even then, she doesn’t let go.

 

***

 

In the morning, Natasha woke to the smell of fresh coffee.

 

She picked herself gingerly off the living room floor, brushing dust and small shards of glass from her skin. It took her a few minutes to locate the clothing she’d worn the night before, and she gave up after finding her bra and underwear, padding upstairs to the bedroom to pull one of Clint’s t-shirts and a pair of her own leggings from the dresser.

 

Clint was waiting for her in the kitchen, sipping coffee from a chipped mug. “Morning,” he greeted her. “We have no non-broken dishware. Congratulations on winning a trip to IKEA.”

 

Natasha laughed, tiptoeing up to kiss him, heedless of her sore lip, and Clint put his mug down to wind his arms around her. He smelled like sweat and dried blood and she breathed him in, a soft sound of protest escaping her mouth when he pulled away, reaching for him.

 

“Stop that, you.” He batted her hands away and poured her a cup of coffee, passing it to her in a mug that was missing its handle. “I blame you for this, by the way. I wasn’t the one firing into the kitchen.”

 

“We’ll mention that in the insurance report,” she said, and they clinked their broken mugs together.

 

They ate breakfast on the kitchen floor, sharing a bowl of cereal and passing their one usable glass, filled with orange juice, back and forth. Natasha leaned against Clint’s shoulder, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin, to breathe his scent. Every now and then, he would press a kiss to the top of her head, his lips playful against her hair.

 

“Are we going to talk about it?” Clint asked finally, taking another bite of cereal.

 

Natasha took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “We should,” she said. “What do we say?”

 

Clint laughed. “Honestly, I have no idea.” He put his bowl down, and shifted away from her, holding out his hand. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Clint Barton, codename: Hawkeye. I’m a Senior Agent with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division of the United States government.”

 

Wanting to laugh at the absurdity, Natasha took his hand. “Nice to meet you, Agent Barton. My name is Natalia Romanova, codename: Black Widow. I am a covert KGB agent, trained in hand-to-hand combat, firearms, espionage, infiltration and interrogation.” Her voice felt tight in her throat at the last part and his fingers squeezed hers, something very much like understanding in his eyes.

 

“Well, Natalia,” Clint said slowly, “There’s something you should know. Twenty-four hours ago, my superiors gave me a direct order to eliminate you.”

 

Natasha held his hand in hers, didn’t break his gaze. “And yet I’m still alive.”

 

Clint took her bowl of cereal from her free hand and put it on the floor, cupped his hand over her cheek. “Yeah, you are.” He leaned forward, kissed her forehead, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. Natasha felt tears gather at the corners of her eyes. “I made a different call,” he whispered, his lips finding hers.

 

“Clint,” she said against his lips, and tugged him against her, drawing him down onto the floor. She pulled his shirt over his head, unbuttoned his pants and slipped her hand inside to draw him out; he peeled her leggings and underwear down, settling between her legs and kissing her at her core. “Yes,” she breathed, threading her fingers through his hair, and Clint made a quiet sound against her. His fingers tightened on her thighs and Natasha let her head fall back against the floor. “ _Yes_ ,” she said again, and he scraped his teeth against her, hard enough to make her cry out and push her hips forward, trying to get him closer, harder.

 

He brought her to the brink but wouldn’t let her tumble over, and she grunted in frustration, grabbing his shoulders and rolling them over, sinking down onto him with a gasp and a moan. “Nat,” he groaned, and she leaned down, kissing him, feeling the clench of his thighs under her ass, riding him hard and fast, his hands coming up to close around her hips. He said, “ _Tasha_ , God, yes,” and for the first time she could remember he came before her, shuddering hard, and Natasha thought _this man is beautiful_ before his thumb found her clit, circling it once, twice, three times before she was gone, jerking hard against him and collapsing with a cry over his chest.

 

Clint wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, and Natasha pressed her forehead against his, breathing in the smells of sweat and sex. “I love you,” she whispered. Clint made a soft sound and Natasha realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d said it, really said the words. She’d thought them last night but it wasn’t the same, wasn’t nearly the same, and she said it again, out loud, the words spilling from her lips until Clint kissed her, his thumbs brushing the moisture from her eyelashes, unwontedly tender.

 

For one, dazzling moment, everything was quiet, and peaceful, and perfect.

 

And then someone threw a grenade through their window.

 

Instinct kicked in and Natasha wrenched herself off Clint, snatching the grenade and throwing it as hard as she could back out the window, then throwing herself back down. To his credit, Clint moved just as quickly, rolling them to cover her with his body as the grenade went off, sending drywall and plaster and what Natasha was pretty sure was her kitchen sink flying over their heads. Natasha opened her eyes, meeting Clint’s as he looked down at her. “Your people?” she hissed.

 

Clint shook his head, his forehead moving against hers. “They wouldn’t,” he said. “Yours?”

 

Natasha swallowed, thinking of Sergei, of Ivan. “They would.”

 

Clint leaned down, kissed her. “We have to get out,” he said. “Get to the car. Grab as many weapons as you can find. On three?”

 

Gunfire opened up, automatic, sending a spray of bullets through what remained of their kitchen. “Three!” Natasha yelled, pushing Clint off her. She had time to see him wrench his boxers back up and make a grab for his undershirt but she didn’t bother, picking up her underwear and running naked into the living room instead, snatching Clint’s dress shirt from where he’d thrown it the night before, closing a few buttons one-handed as she picked up as many of her abandoned guns as she could. She threw the pile onto the couch just long enough to step into her underwear, slipping a handgun into the waistband and gathering the rest into her arms, sprinting through the house to the garage.

 

Clint was waiting for her in his SUV, the passenger door already open, his bow in the back seat and two guns in easy reach. Natasha jumped into the passenger seat, throwing her stash of guns into the back seat. “ _Go_ ,” she said.

 

“Seat belt,” Clint said.

 

“Are you fucking serious?”

 

“I’m about to crash through the fucking door, of course I’m serious.” Natasha rolled her eyes and clicked her seatbelt into place, and Clint grinned at her. “Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome.” A round of bullets went through the garage door, narrowly missing the windshield, and Natasha rolled down her window, cocking one gun. “ _Now_ , will you go?”

 

“Right away, dear.” Clint threw the car into gear and stepped on the gas, and Natasha braced herself as they drove through the closed garage door, full throttle.

 

***

 

This is true: Clint is a car man. He knows cars, he knows trucks, and he knows how to buy a car that can do just about anything. So when he goes to the dealership to buy matching SUVs for himself and Natasha, the salesman tells him about the storage space and the childproofing and the safety features, what Clint wants to know about is the more _off-the-record_ features: double-plated glass windows and reinforced bumpers and fiberglass siding. Clint wants cars that he can race and crash and ram shit with, and Clint knows how to find what he wants.

 

This is true: Natasha hates car chases. She thinks they’re messy and inelegant, and she leaves them to the _boys_ , the new blood from Moscow and St. Petersburg who don’t know any better, who joined up for the action and the excitement. Let them get splattered across the road; Natasha was made for finer things.

 

This is true: Clint loves car chases. He thinks they’re badass. As they crash through their garage door, he tells Natasha this.

 

This is true: Natasha says, “Of _course_ you do,” and is not the slightest bit surprised.

 

***

 

They skidded out onto the street and Clint took stock of the scene on their lawn out of the rear-view mirror: a collection of black vans, black-clad men with guns, and what looked like a surveillance crew as well, if the armored car across the street was any indication. “Damn,” he said, whipping the wheel around to get them out of the cul-de-sac. “Your folks don’t waste time with avoiding clichés, do they?”

 

“We’re Russian,” Natasha said flatly, “we have a deep cultural love for tradition.”

 

“Oh, my God, I’ve married a Tolstoy caricature,” Clint deadpanned, stepping hard on the gas to pull onto the main street. Two of the armored vans had pulled out behind them and Clint scowled. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Natasha, how are you on stunt driving?”

 

She eyed him. “Why?”

 

“Because I need you to drive.” He set the cruise control and twisted out of the front seat, and Natasha moved with surprising fluidity to take his place, flipping the cruise control off and gripping the wheel hard.

 

“Brace,” she said, and he held on to the back seat with one hand as she wrenched them onto the highway on ramp. “What are you doing?”

 

“Covering us.” He chambered the Glock, aimed it at the back window, and sighed. “Sorry, Betsy,” he said, and shot out the back window. The bullet kept traveling, puncturing the windshield of the armored van behind them, and Clint mentally congratulated himself.

 

“Who the hell is Betsy?”

 

“Betsy is my car,” he said, cocking the gun. “Does yours not have a name?” Natasha’s incredulous look in the rear-view mirror was answer enough, and he sighed. “Any other deep, dark secrets I ought to know?”

 

Natasha swerved them into the left lane, accelerating past a minivan. The scandalized soccer mom behind the wheel blared her horn at them. “I never went to art school,” she said. “Actually, I never really went to school at all.”

 

“Forged college diplomas? I think they’ve got laws against that.” A bullet imbedded itself in the seat next to Clint’s cheek and he returned fire.

 

“I show you mine, you show me yours,” Natasha said.

 

Fair enough, Clint supposed. “I was never in the military.”

 

Natasha made a disappointed sound. “I liked that about you! It showed discipline.”

 

“I’ve got plenty of discipline without it,” he assured her. She steered them onto the shoulder to get around an eighteen-wheeler and Clint yelped, steadying himself against the seat.

 

“I killed a man the night you proposed to me,” Natasha said.

 

“Before, or after?”

 

“Before,” she said, sounding almost affronted.

 

“Well, that’s alright.” Clint traded the gun for his bow and shot two arrows in quick succession, taking out the armored van’s two front tires. It skidded and flipped over, and he allowed himself a moment of smugness before the second van swerved around to take its place. “I was married before.”

 

Natasha slammed on the breaks and Clint tumbled forward into the front seat in time to take a punch to the face. “Jesus fuck, Natasha—”

 

“I want a name,” she said, pressing the gas hard enough that Clint shot into the back seat again.

 

“You’re not gonna kill her,” he said. “We got divorced before I met you—”

 

“I want a name _and_ a social security number.”

 

“You can have a first name,” he said, rubbing his jaw, “and only if I get a written statement saying you won’t do anything to hurt her. A _notarized_ written statement.” Natasha scowled at him in the rear-view mirror, and Clint blew her a kiss. “Take this exit,” he said.

 

Natasha gave him a look that said _this conversation is not over_ , and he leaned over the seats to drop a wet kiss on her cheek. “You’ll notice,” he said, “that _you’re_ the one I’m married to now. Even after you tried to kill me.”

 

“You tried to kill me, too,” she said, but she sounded a little less angry, cutting across three lanes of traffic to get off at the exit ramp. The van trailing them, despite its blaring horn, shot past the exit, but Natasha turned on to the first tiny back road she could find, parking along the side of the street.

 

They clambered out of the car, Clint strapping on his quiver and slinging his bow over his shoulder, passing one of the guns to Natasha. “Okay,” he said, “we need a phone.”

 

Natasha buttoned the rest of Clint’s shirt. It fell down just below the curve of her ass, and he took a moment to admire her thighs. “There’s a pay phone,” she said. “There, on the corner.”

 

He set out at a run and Natasha followed him, careless of the stares they got, running barefoot and barely dressed down the street. He picked up the phone and hit “0”.

 

“Thank you for using this service,” a tinny, female voice told him. “If you'd like to place a call, press 1, if you'd like directory assistance, press 2.” Clint jabbed “1” and the voice continued, “Please state your name and dial your desired number.”

 

“Clive Roberts,” he said, and, conscious of Natasha’s presence against his side, dialed in the nine-digit number ever SHIELD agent was required to memorize before their first mission.

 

“Grandma Sue’s Bakery,” a cheerful voice answered. “Thank you for calling! How can I help you?”

 

“This is Agent Clint Barton, codename: Hawkeye, serial number 7-echo-03851-november-bravo. Get me Fury.”

 

The voice’s cheerfulness seemed to disappear. “Agent Barton, you missed two check-ins. Director Fury is pissed. I can get you Hill—”

 

“Get me Fury,” Clint repeated. “ _Now_.” He glanced at Natasha, who was watching the street over his shoulder, her brow furrowed.

 

“Please hold,” the voice said, overly polite, and Clint rolled his eyes. He hated junior agents.

 

There was a click, a brief tone, and then Nick Fury’s voice came over the line. “Barton, where the _fuck_ have you been? Coulson’s throwing a fit.”

 

Clint snorted. “Coulson doesn’t throw fits, sir. I need evac for me and an asset.”

 

“An asset?” Fury sounded incredulous. “Barton, I need confirmation that you have neutralized the Black Widow.”

 

“Uh.” Clint looked at Natasha again. She arched one eyebrow. “Neutralized is…not the word I’d use.”

 

“Well, why don’t you tell me what word you would use, instead of being a little shit?”

 

 _Ah, Fury_ , Clint thought. _Always with the people skills. May you never change_. “Sir, I married the hostile.”

 

“You _what_?” There was a crash and Clint actually winced. “Someone get me Hill and Coulson. _No, right the fuck now, you little fucker, do I look like I’m patient?_ Barton,” he said, voice sounding almost alarmingly controlled. “When exactly did you have time to marry the hostile?”

 

“Five years ago next week,” Clint said cheerfully. Natasha’s lips quirked up in the barest hint of a smile. “Sir, she didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t know who she was. I want to bring her in.”

 

“The Black Widow is at the top of our threat list,” Fury snapped. “What makes you so sure she’ll defect?”

 

Natasha’s lips thinned. “Tell him,” she said slowly, “that if I was not willing to defect, you would be dead.”

 

Clint relayed the message, and Fury snorted. “It’s on your head, Barton. I’ve got a lock on your location. I’m sending Coulson in with a team. Twenty minutes out.”

 

“Fury,” Clint said. “I want your word that she won’t be harmed.”

 

He could hear Fury’s gears turning. “My word,” Fury said after an agonizing moment, during which Natasha’s fingers found his hand and clenched, hard. “She’s off-limits. You’d better be worth your word, Barton.”

 

“Never let you down before, sir.” Clint hung up the phone, turning and pulling Natasha into a kiss. “All good?” he murmured against her lips.

 

“Yes and no,” she said, pulling away from him. “Hostiles, on your left.”

 

Clint turned, bringing up his bow in time to see the armored van come crashing down the side street, men leaning out of the doors. “In case this goes to shit,” he said, “I love you.”

 

“Don’t let it go to shit,” Natasha said, but she gave him a faint smile. “I love you, too.”

 

They set off at a run, weapons raised, and Clint could still feel the tingle of her lips against his.

 

***

 

This is true: _Violence is a dance_ , Ivan told her. _And you are a dancer_. Natasha is a dancer, yes, and she has always danced alone. But sex is a dance, too, and she and Clint have been dancing together for years. So it comes as no surprise that when they charge into battle together, guns blazing, they sink into an instantaneous rhythm. She knows where he is without looking, can sense his presence at her back, at her side.

 

This is true: Natasha fights with a grace born from years of training and conditioning. But Clint, oh—he fights like he does everything else, at once fluid and calculating, wild and elegant. He’s as nimble as she is, almost as flexible, and she watches him out of the corner of her eye out of more than concern.

 

This is true: Clint fights like a soldier, and it is almost enough.

 

***

 

The bullet caught him in the gut. Clint stumbled back, and Natasha felt her blood run cold. “Clint!” She caught him as he staggered, forcing him to the ground behind what remained of the SUV, bullet-ridden but still shelter. “Clint. Baby—” an endearment she never used, slipping out before she could stop it “—talk to me, Clint.”

 

“’S not bad,” he slurred, but his t-shirt was turning red under her frantic fingers.

 

She could hear a plane overhead. “Clint,” she said, urgently, “I can hear them. SHIELD is coming, just hold on.”

 

He grinned up at her, teeth bloody. “Guess that whole _til death do us part_ thing came a little sooner—”

 

“We didn’t say that,” Natasha said, cutting him off. She pressed down harder against the wound.

 

Clint rasped out a laugh. “Maybe we should’ve.” He reached up, threaded his fingers through her hair. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

 

“You told me that the day we met,” she said. “Do you remember?” Keep him conscious, keep him talking. Basic field first aid.

 

“Told you you were bold, too.” His eyes glinted. “Hasn’t changed. Natasha.”

 

She bent down, pressed her forehead to his. “Stop,” she said. “Just don’t.”

 

“Was going to ask you,” he said. “Our anniversary. Next week—let’s do something special.”

 

“Whatever you want,” she said. He was losing blood at an alarming rate, but his eyes were sharp and steady, his breathing even. “What do you want?”

 

“Marry me,” he said. “Marry me again.”

 

“My romantic,” Natasha said, and leaned down to kiss him. “Yes.”

 

The wind picked up and the sound of a plane roared above them, and then a sleek, high-tech aircraft was touching down behind them. A gangplank lowered, a slender, middle-aged man in a well-cut suit coming down with an AR-15 in his hands. “Agent Barton,” he said, “You called for backup?”

 

“Oh, good,” Clint said. “Natasha, this is Phil. Phil, this is Natasha. Don’t kill her. And someone find me a medic.”

 

***

 

This is true: They board the jet. Clint is loaded onto a gurney and fussed over by a medical team, and Phil sharply tells a group of junior agents that Natasha is not to be handcuffed or restrained in any way. She sits by Clint’s side and holds his hand in hers, rubbing the platinum ring on his finger. It is crusted with dried blood, just like hers, but it fits there, and she wonders if he’s ever taken it off. She thinks that he probably hasn’t, and it makes her smile.

 

This is true: The jet takes them to an airbase in the sky. The medics take Clint into surgery and Natasha is debriefed by Phil and a female agent, Maria Hill. She is calm and collected and passes her psych evaluation with flying colors, and within an hour she has a SHIELD serial number and badge, and if her security clearance isn’t high, she’s fairly sure it’s just a matter of time. In exchange, she gives Phil names, bank account information, and residential coordinates of every KGB official she knows. From the look on his face, it’s more than he had in mind. When Clint wakes up from his surgery, groggy but pain-free, Natasha is sitting by his bedside in a SHIELD-issue uniform, twisting her wedding ring around her finger, and Clint grins up at her, like he had no doubts in the world.

 

This is true: That night, Phil Coulson goes off base. He sits in a bar and, over the course of many, many drinks, tells the guy sitting next to him about the clusterfuck that is his life. He tells them everything Clint and Natasha told him, barring any details that could cause an international incident, and the guy listens, eyes wide. “What about you?” Coulson says when he’s done, chugging down the rest of his vodka tonic. “What do you do?”

 

This is true: The guy says, “I’m a screenwriter, actually,” and Coulson thinks, _oh, fuck_.

 

This is true: Clint’s healing stitches keep them from any extravagant adventures for their anniversary. But Phil pulls a favor, and the SHIELD chaplain meets them in the medical ward. They renew their vows. This time, they have witnesses, and when the chaplain says _you may kiss the bride_ , everyone claps and Clint thinks, _this is the way it was supposed to be_. They sign Clint out AMA and go to Natasha’s new quarters, and make love under military-issue lighting, laughing into each other’s mouths. They hold hands the entire time, and when Clint says _I love you_ , Natasha says it back, over and over in a breathless litany. It’s the opposite of luxurious and in the end Clint’s stitches tear, but it’s perfect.

 

This is true: They don’t live happily ever after, but they do live, and they’re happy, they’re together, and they think that in the end, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> In the next installment: there is a marriage, Natasha has trust issues, Clint is amazing at cover stories, and Coulson gets suspicious.


End file.
